Pubdate: Sun, 23 Jun 2013
Source: Telegraph, The (Nashua, NH)
Copyright: 2013 Telegraph Publishing Company
Contact:  http://www.nashuatelegraph.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/885
Author: John Stossel

WHY THE DRUG WAR IS WORSE THAN PROHIBITION

As Americans obsess over NSA spying, abuse by the IRS and other
assaults on our freedom, I can't get my mind off the thousand other
ways politicians abuse us.

In their arrogance, they assume that only they solve social problems.
They will solve them by banning this and that, subsidizing groups they
deem worthy and setting up massive bureaucracies with a mandate to
cure, treat and rescue wayward souls.

Their programs fail, and so they pass new laws to address the
failures. It's one reason that 22 million people now work for government.

Some of the things they do seem like bigger assaults on our freedom
than NSA spying, although we've become accustomed to the older abuses.

Take the drug war.

It's true that some Americans destroy their lives and their families'
lives by using drugs. Others struggle with addiction. But if illegal
drugs are as horrible and addictive as we've been told, how come the
government's own statistics say millions try those drugs but only a
small percentage continue using?

Ninety-five percent of those who have tried what we think of as "hard
drugs" report not using the substances in the past month.

Columbia University psychology professor Dr. Carl Hart, author of "High 
Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery," says "hard" drugs 
are not as dangerous as the media make them out to be. For 15 years, 
he's studied the effects of marijuana, methamphetamine, crack cocaine 
and more on users.

"The data simply shows that the vast majority of people who use these
drugs don't go on to become addicted," he said on my show. "In fact,
some of these people go on to become president."

He means Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama. "All those guys used
illegal drugs at some point."

Society has grown more accepting of marijuana, but many people believe
crack and meth are far more dangerous and addictive, and that they
quickly lead to violent criminal behavior.

"The same thing was said about marijuana in the 1930s," Hart cautions.
"People said you use this drug, you go on to commit murder, you go on
to use heroin." New drugs always frighten authorities.

When the panic over meth passes, we may look back on it with
amusement, much the way people now look back on the anti-marijuana
propaganda film "Reefer Madness."

To learn what drugs really do, Hart advertises for drug users on
Craigslist, and then, with government approval, he gives users drugs
at his lab at Columbia. He's discovered that drug users' brains react
in similar ways to the brains of alcohol consumers.

"The vast majority of people who use drugs like cocaine use it on
weekends, monthly or every six months," says Hart. "Most hold jobs.
Pay taxes. They do those things, in a similar way that we use drugs
like alcohol."

Government's anti-drug crusaders think they protect kids by hyping the
threat, but Hart says they actually make it harder for people like him
to educate the public about real dangers. After the hype over
marijuana, young people no longer trust warnings about other drugs.

Finally, he adds, politicians' futile war kills more people than the
forbidden substances themselves.

The gangs of today, like the Crips and the Bloods, are motivated by
the absurd profits created when legitimate businesses aren't allowed
to sell something - just as Al Capone's empire and the violence of his
turf wars were created by forbidding mainstream businesses to sell
alcohol.

In fact, Hart says, the drug war is worse than Prohibition. It costs
more, has lasted longer and doesn't just kill people in the U.S.: From
Afghanistan to Colombia, American helicopters try to destroy drug
crops. Foreigners gain one more reason to hate Yankees.
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